Poor, poor Overrun

[Kantolin]

Overrun is cool. I would like to make an overrunner.

Now, unless I'm horribly mistaken, Overrun seems awful. Is there any way to particularly get some use out of Overrun sans the typical would-be-better-for-tripping set of being large, taking Improved Overrun, and focusing on high strength? Asking mostly about feats and prestige classes that help with it.

If nothing else, information about any feat which made the attack of opportunity for attempting to overrun someone go away would be very pleasant, as improved Overrun does not do this.

[tyckspoon]

Well, you need a way to make running over people do something useful, right? Sounds like a call for Trample to me. Get a mount with the ability, cast Greater Mighty Wallop on its hooves if you can get your DM to agree with it, and run over things. I'm not sure if there's a way to get that without being either mounted or shapechanged into a rhino or similar (well, without being a centaur or other tauric beast.)

Other than that, Overrun is for getting through stuff so you can do something else to something that was being blocked. Most printed material quite sensibly deals more with what you do to the target you wanted rather than the incidental critter that is standing between you and it.. in cleaner words, no, I don't know of anything that makes Overrun stop sucking.

[Nebo_]

I don't know of anything that makes Overrun stop sucking.

Really big creatures with really high strength. I've seen overrun used to great effect.

[Kantolin]

Mrr. I'm trying to do this myself, not with a mount.

But curses, that's not hopeful. I even checked to see if you could avoid the AOO with spring attack, which would've been an amusing mental picture of a linebacker, but nope.

[Squash Monster]

Play a Druid. Wild shape into something big and heavy that would be good at this.

And while you're at it, consider getting a form with Trample. If you turn into, say, an elephant, then you can do gobs of damage while you overrun.

For additional hilarity, consider forms like Cave Triceratops that have both Trample and Powerful Charge. Now you can play the Cave Triceratops Shuffle, where you charge an opponent one turn, trample away the next, and charge again the next.

[BRC]

You could be a centaur?

Or maybe a paladin with a Rhino mount.

[Starsinger]

Or maybe a paladin with a Rhino mount.

Mrr. I'm trying to do this myself, not with a mount.

Somehow I don't think that's quite what he wants.

[Person_Man]

For the non-mounted, its hopeless. Give up all your attacks to run over an enemy? Why?

Even for the mounted, you need a house rule for it to work properly. By RAW, its a Standard Action. Which means you can't use it as part of a Ride By Attack, which is a charge.

[Prometheus]

It can be used in conjunction with skirmish, although I'm not entirely certain the benefits of obtaining skirmish outweigh that of obtaining alternate abilities.

Hmm...An Gelatinous Cube has an engulf ability which makes enemies considered to be grappled and subject to acid and poison. An advanced Gelatinous Cube could be rode with an ooze-riding magic item (from Arms and Equipment I think) which would allow the character to attack the engulf victims. Is there any class which receives significant attack bonuses against grappled creatures? Also I'm certain there are other engulfing monsters in other monster manuals.

The biggest advantage of a overrunning is that it functions as a spring attack in that you don't have to be next to your opponent. So any build that has so much speed that it can't be followed by most melee combatants (except perhaps monks) or so much reach that melee combatants pay for following, could do very well by using its turns to trample.

[Orzel]

My barbarian/ranger/psywar centaur, Choo Choo, overruns well in our low magic campaign since Magical Flight doesn't exist there.

Suck when the DM dominated him and made him the BBEG's personal assassin. And I was forced to make a d4 HD guy.

[Kantolin]

For the non-mounted, its hopeless. Give up all your attacks to run over an enemy? Why?

That's what it really seemed like to me. It does, granted, make them prone, but so does tripping - which is the same check and doesn't kill you for doing it. I was hoping there was some magic function or feat combination that would fix that, but it looks like that's not the case.

The biggest advantage of a overrunning is that it functions as a spring attack in that you don't have to be next to your opponent.

The flaw with it, though, is that it provokes an attack of opportunity from the guy you're overrunning (Even with Improved Overrun). Spring attack doesn't do this.


Looks like the only way to get anything out of it is to be a creature with trample. Grumblecakes. I wonder if there's some way for a fighter-type to get access to trample.


*Grumble* Something else just occured to me. Overrun is a standard action, therefore you can only do it to one creature a round, huh? Mrr, you can't even guarantee moving your max range (provided you succeed on overruns).

Oh, well. I'll probably still use it on my fighter, but consider me dramatically dissapointed in a potentially-cool ability.

[Mojo_Rat]

I have a Barbarian wih Improved overrun. Its beens omewhat useful in dungeons against Enemy spellcasters where they dont have the room to fly or other such things. Although I was disappointed when I realized i couldnt run over several people on my way to said wizard. It does make getting around the battlefield a little easier though as You dont have to go around people.

[Darrin]

If nothing else, information about any feat which made the attack of opportunity for attempting to overrun someone go away would be very pleasant, as improved Overrun does not do this.

Try the Elusive Dance feat from Dragon #333. It only works on one target, but other than the Perform (Dance) 5 requirement, it's easy to pick up and doesn't require any checks or special conditions to deny AoOs.

http://realmshelps.dandello.net/cgi-...e_Dance,Dragon